Tom, why dont you get rid of the page, most people use MSN or another chat service, and it takes up bandwith. That should help get rid of money wasted. Everybody can just use msn, its got a lot more features too.
MSN isn't too great, it has a lot of downtime, and lacks ease of finding someone. The pager on the other hand lets you add a key name and have it work, it also has the extra feature of the pager ban; which disallows banned people to login. And, it also comes with a bunch of nifty features, like the ablity to invite people to your games. I wouldn't mind paying a small monthly (or moderate priced yearly) fee to use the pager, I'd rather lose the ablity to freely post items on the HUB than lose the pager.
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Every time I read this, it seems to get deeper and deeper. Here's what I think:
Dantom is trying to make a free product for us, yet they can't maintain it without money. They want convienence, yet they can't do that without money. Why then, would anyone uppose to pay them? They created a superb product, yet they get nothing?! They pull from their pocket and give us a chance to put a few in ours, and they get nothing... If I had my game, I could charge money to give to Dantom, and I'm sure a player wouldn't mind paying a dime a month(a dollar and twenty cents a year)to support Dantom. Anyway, I guess my point is that we have to give a little to get so much, it shouldn't be a problem! Tom, can yah do us a favor? Give an estimate of how much you need per user(count developers too, they cost money too!)and tell us what is costing yah money. | |
I believe estimates are around $1 per user per year with the biggest cost being the development of the software, and supporting all the users. The pager is costly as well, I hear. I think Tom said somewhere else in this monster thread that it's costing Dantom roughly $500 a month to maintain BYOND with no real income for either Dan or Tom. Estimates are around $2000 per month to maintain things when BYOND goes public, but could easily be higher. I think Dantom would be quite happy to get $1.50 to $2.00 per user a year consistently. I believe that would sustain the system, as well as provide some minimal income for Dantom. I would rather see Dantom raking in $5 to $10 per user a year, but it would take a lot of work on everyone's part to pull that off.
~X | |
But, as I commented in my post below, it does need a few more features before people would consider paying for it. I know I wouldn't pay for it in its current state -- technically, of course, $10 a year is a trifle, but even the fact that it's an almost insanely low price, I wouldn't feel I'm getting enough bang for my buck.
(I do stand by most, if not all, of the prices I listed in my post below. Splitting the charges between the developers and the players would work very well (especially a $25 subscription license -- takes money to make money).) | |
Spuzzum wrote:
"Clickthrough", by definition, means following a banner's link and then purchasing something on the other side. =P In that case, why not charge 1-10% or something :oP. | |
Spuzzum wrote:
(a $25 subscription license -- takes money to make money) I'm still in favor of that, too. Although I don't know whether it'd be an advantage because it gives extra money from all developers who are out to earn it, or a disadvantage because it keeps people from charging for their games. Advantages: - Extra money for Dantom. - Gives developers an incentive to make better games. - Keeps rip-off dealers out. - Gives designers an excuse to charge more for games. Disadvantages: - Could discourage designers from charging at all. - That means no money for Dantom. | |
Spuzzum wrote:
(especially a $25 subscription license -- takes money to make money) Personally, I am against charging initial fees for this sort of thing. It is a well-known fact that on the internet, people are reluctant to pay money (as someone mentioned waaay up somewhere near the top of this thread). I know that if I had had to pay a $25 fee (nearly $50 Australian for me - you could buy a commercial computer game for that) just to give Thieves a place on the hub, I would not have paid it and quite possibly would never have distributed it. With higher prices and more users being the norm, I might well have made that back - but how could I be sure of that before I actually spent that $25? Instant turn-off. AUD$50 seems like quite a lot of money to spend for someone my age (14)... (I'm not saying it IS, just that it seems so and this may well turn people away.) I'm a big supporter of the 50% model, myself. No startup fees, but Dantom will most probably cover their costs and even make a profit. Besides, does the hub entry itself really cost them much? A small amount of storage for the zip file maybe, but nothing substantial. If I remember rightly, Tom said the main cost is in the bandwidth taken up by these downloads; so it makes sense either to charge for downloads, or for subscriptions. Of course, in either case the cost should be worn by the developer - I don't think anyone is arguing about that. So - downloads or subscriptions? I would prefer subscriptions. Yes, it is the downloads that are costing them money, but assuming a certain percentage of people do sign up (which seems more than likely), they will make that back. Also, a download fee is another potential turn-off for developers. However, a percentage of subscriptions will seem quite appealing, as there is nil chance of them actually losing money. | |
You're confusing something. The $25 fee would be to sell the game through BYOND's system, and nothing else.
Look at the way SilkWizard did things with Proelium. He built a game that became popular, making it free to play. He later added subscription fees that enabled players to use bonus features, but still leaving the game to play. Now, you tell me, if you stood to make over $300 off a game, would it be worth $25 to sell it? Of course, he could create some way to bypass the BYOND system entirely and try to make money by having people send in the money or something. Saving himself 50% + $25 merchant fee. (The downside is that with all the sales fees getting piled on, his $300 would quickly be turned into a mere $125...) | |
Crispy wrote:
If I remember rightly, Tom said the main cost is in the bandwidth taken up by these downloads; so it makes sense either to charge for downloads, or for subscriptions. Hmmm, I wonder... Are there any plans to allow a developer to keep the zip file on another host's site, yet still utilize the subscription architecture? If so, Dantom would still get their 50% cut while at the same time reducing the burden on their systems. I would setup my games this way, if it were possible. ~X | |
Crispy wrote:
Personally, I am against charging initial fees for this sort of thing. It is a well-known fact that on the internet, people are reluctant to pay money (as someone mentioned waaay up somewhere near the top of this thread). Yes, I also believe that is the case. So I'd rather have as little startup fees as possible, although maybe just enough to weed out the fraudulent entries (and these could even be bypassed if we had enough hub moderators). Besides, does the hub entry itself really cost them much? A small amount of storage for the zip file maybe, but nothing substantial. If I remember rightly, Tom said the main cost is in the bandwidth taken up by these downloads; so it makes sense either to charge for downloads, or for subscriptions. Of course, in either case the cost should be worn by the developer - I don't think anyone is arguing about that. The hub downloads do cost us a lot in bandwidth; so much, in fact, that we have to do away with them. But you will be able to just upload your game to another website and have the system work seamlessly from there (the game-launcher recognizes http:// downloads). More on this in my first post: [link] But outside of the game downloads, there are lots of little associated costs just by virtue of having lots of users. Big websites (which we'd like to be) cost money. Everytime someone refreshes the games live page, checks in on the forums, sends a page, views a banner ... these all take up bandwidth. As more users come in, we run into scalability issues that take up lots of time and possible hardware additions. So we need to make sure that we have an income that scales with the user base. After we have our model in place, we can see exactly how we are doing in this regard-- I think the first ten thousand users or so should give us a very good idea of where we stand. At that point, we can tweak the model as necessary. As I said, I don't much care if we don't get rich of this, but we do have to make enough to support ourselves and hopefully give the project room to grow. | |
I think we are going to need an economy forum to contain this beast of a subject. =P
-DogMan | |
The point of the $25 subscription license has nothing to do with hub entries, but rather with the hassle of transfering currency. What Dantom isn't factoring into their equation, in my opinion, is how much support and maintenance they have to provide. That $25 dollar fee is charged to you so that Dantom has payment for the service required for fraudulent cases and troubleshooting any subscription-related issues that arise. It has the helpful side effect that it stops fraudulent salespeople as well.
If you don't want to pay $25, don't try to make money in BYOND. Simple as that. =) | |
Spuzzum wrote:
If you don't want to pay $25, don't try to make money in BYOND. Simple as that. =) That's fair enough, and I agree with the reasoning behind it, but I'm just concerned about the initial reaction of people who come to BYOND. If they see an initial fee that they have to pay before they can make money, some will dismiss BYOND entirely and never get into it at all. | |
Suggestion: This is stupid, but heh! If someone is going on vacation, or out of town for over a month -- have them tick a button off in Identity {on BYOND.com}. Otherwise, if someone's account is inactive for 30 days and did not tick it, have it delete the account. I noticed alot of programs have that, but without the tick ;)
RaeKwon | |
Tom wrote:
Gakumerasara wrote: I enjoy making games, as long as i'm in the community, my games will always be free. <font size=1>this discludes a donate verb! ^_^<Font size=2> RaeKwon | |
Then make a great free game that pulls in players who are likely to want to try out other games too.